A note before we begin
First of all - this isn’t a site meant to show anyone how to make easy money on the financial markets. It’s just a place where I write about how I see trading. What drew me to it, where I stumbled, and which tools make sense to me along the way.
How I came to trading
I came to trading differently than most people do.
In 2008 I was lucky enough to work - as a programmer - for a private commodity hedge fund (managed futures). And since it was 2008, I got to see and experience the impact of the global financial crisis from the perspective of an investment company - along with the opportunities that eventually came out of it.
My role was algorithmic trading, and since then countless different strategies have passed through my hands.
And I learned something from every one of them.
The Turtle Traders moment
That same first year, when I first came into contact with trading, I heard the story of the Turtle Traders.
It was actually the very first trading story I ever heard, and I kind of grew up on it - reading everything about them I could get my hands on.
Trading my own account
In 2010 I started trading my own account. Back then I expected something different from it than what it actually turned out to be.
If I had to sum up that experience in two points, it would probably be these.
You will lose money
I knew I would lose - but it somehow didn’t fully sink in.
When a trade went wrong, I took it as a problem. Even though I’d seen at the company where I worked that it’s a completely normal thing.
On your own account, though, you feel very different emotions.
It took me a while to realize that here a mistake isn’t a failure - it’s part of the whole process. No strategy works a hundred percent of the time, and even people who’ve been doing this for years don’t get every trade right.
Those early losses frustrated me, until I reframed them as tuition. We always pay somehow for what we learn - and here, this is how you pay.
You won’t get rich
At least not the way I’d hoped.
The opportunities on the market really are there, that goes without saying. But the quick, easy path doesn’t exist.
And then, after years, the good news
It’s like anything else we do in life - it takes time and it takes work, and it doesn’t matter at all where we are now, what we know, what we studied, where we worked.
That’s actually what I enjoy about it:
- It’s not about talent you’re born with.
- It’s not even about a high IQ - that’s often more of a hindrance than a help.
- It’s about the fact that it can be learned, if you put your own into it.
And when, after years, you start to see it differently - through the process, through the mistakes and through the successes - the whole thing starts to make a completely different kind of sense.
Perspective comes. Calm. Composure.
And those matter a great deal in trading. You actually discover another piece of yourself through it.
What trading really is, for me
Trading, the way I see it today, isn’t only about money.
It’s about the process - and about whether we can find ourselves in it. The money can then be just the result of that process.
For me personally there’s one more dimension to it - three of my passions met here:
- mathematics,
- programming (because of algo trading),
- and trading itself.
I believe: Successful traders are made, not born.
